Either Way You Slice It, Understand Advertising Opportunities to Effectively Promote Your Company

Need a marketing plan for your business? Think of a hot cheese pizza or mouth-watering apple pie. There are many ways to divide the way you market your business depending on the size of your company, your goals, and your budget.

No matter how you slice it, an essential piece of the pie is advertising.

So how do you determine what is the best form of advertising? Just like there are a variety of pizza toppings and pie flavors, the key is to understand the various advertising options and the benefits of different kinds of advertising to maximize your outreach and budget goals.

American advertising pioneer Leo Burnett once said, “Good advertising does not just circulate information. It penetrates the public mind with desires and belief.”

This is why repetition and design are important factors when planning an advertising budget. For example, a one-time ad in a newspaper may not be the best use of your budget and outreach. The goal is to reach your targeted audience multiple times. Plus, advertising rates typically decrease as the number of ads purchased increases. Any advertising budget should also include ad design. While some media outlets may produce an ad for an additional expense, that might be a solution for advertising in just one medium. To remain consistent with your message and branding across more than two advertising mediums and to creatively set your company apart from your competitors, consider hiring a professional designer to develop a series of ads that can cross different mediums.

The following are just a few of the many types of advertising, which can range from broadcast and online to trade publications.

Newspaper
Advertising in newspapers enables advertisers to reach a mass audience, provides a local emphasis, and serves as a future tangible reference since ads can be kept. Newspaper advertising, which can provide a sense of immediacy, can also accommodate short lead times depending on size and placement of the ad. They are also generally flexible in terms of geographic location. For example, some newspaper inserts can be targeted to select regions within the newspaper’s distribution. Since no changes can be made after an ad has gone to print, it is important to thoroughly proofread the ad.

Magazine
Magazines provide an excellent advertising medium for many reasons. Not only do they have a long shelf life, they often have more readers than subscribers because they are passed along in circulation. In addition, magazines offer opportunities for high-quality graphics and the ability to target specific audiences and editorial topics based on your outreach goals. Whether it is a trade publication or a local, regional or national magazine, there are a variety of options available.

Radio
Advertising on the radio allows the advertiser to draw upon a sense of immediacy. It also offers a mass audience of highly targeted demographic listeners. You have the option to have a local or national emphasis depending on which markets you want to reach. Radio is also portable and passive in that your audience can listen to your ad without having to actively read it. The key to a successful radio advertising campaign is to have a high frequency of ads. A good rule of thumb is to have an ad run at least seven times in a week.

Television
Need to reach a mass audience in a highly targeted demographic? Consider television advertising, one of the most complex advertising mediums. While there is a lot more involved in the creation of the ad, the plus side is that there is opportunity for more creativity since television ads are highly visual by offering sight, sound and motion. Another benefit to advertising on television is that ad is put in front of the viewer rather than relying on the viewer to read it. If you have a more limited budget for television advertising, consider tying in with a key promotion that the television station is offering to advertisers to support a specific cause or event.